Road systems may involve collections of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of individual roads or sections of road known as segments. A particular road system may have varying traffic densities, flows, events, or conditions in different geographic positions throughout the road system.
Accurate modeling of traffic speeds for all road segments is important to maintain most modern maps and to facilitate route planning software. Multiple applications and services depend on accurate traffic speed modeling. Updated traffic speed information is important to properly route vehicles and provide up to the minute estimated time of arrivals. Models should be able to take into consideration recent data, historical data, and/or vehicular behavior on multiple types of roads.